BTW, I've only watched the scheduled phone calls as the whole process was differen in my day before there were cell phones. What I saw was the following:
Plebes were on red beach (open red-brick area surrounding Bancroft). En masse, a platoon was handed cellphones and told to start dialing and how many minutes they had to talk (it was 5 or 10 as I recall). They started talking. Remember, there were lots of them in close proximity so each was trying to find a small spot of space to be able to talk and hear in private.
After a few minutes, the Firstie called out "3 minutes left." And the countdown began. 2 minutes, 1 minute 30 seconds, 1 minute -- you get the picture. Toward the end, he'd scream out, "only 30 seconds left, better get those goodbye's in." And then the final countdown of seconds until zero at which time they were yelled at to "stop talking, shut off those phones."
It was all rather amusing from my perspective but probably not from theirs.
The point to this is that you shouldn't expect to have a "normal" conversation with your child. No one will be listening in but it's certainly not a normal environment. If it is perfectly normal, celebrate.
Of course, that was 5 yrs ago -- they may do it differently now.
